Ladylord, by Sasha Miller
Nov. 6th, 2024 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeMori: this will seem a weird time to discuss this, but I wanna talk about a book from our youth: Ladylord, by Sasha Miller.
It’s an epic fantasy/political intrigue story set in a society roughly based on feudal Japan (though it is clearly not Japan—for one thing, it’s not an island). It’s the only book of its type that we have ever been into, and that’s because despite the complexity (there are at least half a dozen different POV groups of importance), the book is organized such that we could keep track of all of it, and the world feels so rich and satisfying to read. Every little detail feels so intricate, from wine flask and garden design to the Hyacinth Shadow World, where the female sex workers run things. (And oh, remember them. We will come back to them.) I feel like if the book had come out just a little bit later (it came out in ‘96), it could’ve been a hit. It’s a solid, well-made story.
The characters and plot of Ladylord feel like a stage drama. The heroes are suitably heroic, the villains truly despicable. When we read this book, we imagine it as an elaborate opera with droolworthy sets. But all that isn’t why I felt a craving to reread it.
See, Ladylord is the best book I have read about overthrowing a despot.
The plot goes as such: Monserria is a land of five provinces, each ruled by a lord, and overseen as a whole by the First Lord (said despot). The Third Lord dies unexpectedly young, with no sons, and in desperation, he names his best daughter (Javere) his son and heir. She has to get ratified by the First Lord, so leaves Third Province in the capable hands of her general to try and claim her title. Monserria, though, is a patriarchal pit of vipers, so First Lord basically gives her a fool’s quest to get rid of her so he can plot taking over her lands. From that one, seemingly trivial act (a woman? Ruling Third Province? How absurd!), things spiral and expand, until finally a huge ensemble cast consisting of men and women, from highest nobility to lowest Dung-Eater, from ancient old men to teenage girls, from all five provinces plus three desert tribes from a totally different region, take down the First Lord.
There are countless stories about a hero taking down an evil overlord one-on-one. We also have beloved stories where our heroes merely SURVIVE under a despot, doing the best they can, running out the clock (like in The Walking Boy or The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions). And epic fantasies are filled with a noble quest band who (along with faceless armies) take down an evil army. But Ladylord is the only one we have really gotten into that focuses on a huge ensemble of CIVILIANS involved in taking the First Lord down. Yes, some of them are nobles (like the Ladylord Javere and her husband Ivo, who is the world’s blandest, most supportive husband, and we fucking love that about him) but many of them are not... like Safia.
I need to tell you about Safia. Safia is a fucking character I did not appreciate until my most recent read. She is the fucking best, and she seems to come out of fucking nowhere.
Because Monserria is a patriarchal pit of vipers, women can basically only obtain power in it through high birth or marriage. However, there is another option for those women who want independence: the Hyacinth Shadow World. These women range from the most disdained of sex workers to the highest courtesans, and they play a vital social role in Monserria. They also operate somewhat independently; it’s not clear how much power the lords truly have over them, and the male lords tend to dismiss them.
Safia starts the book as a courtesan of the highest rank. She joins the story because due to various plot reasons, Ladylord Javere cannot bang her best white-bread husband, and it’s a socially acceptable thing in Monserria to hire a courtesan as a replacement. Ivo, who is the bland best, never does sleep with her, but appearances must be maintained, so Safia ends up in the “ratify my title” party by happenstance. Because she’s not really built for a hard quest, she ends up being given to the First Lord as a gift... and an inside woman.
Everyone dismisses Safia as a rare flower, pretty and delicate and emptyheaded. They’re all wrong. She manages to keep First Lord distracted and engineer the honorable suicide of an ally (and thus let said ally escape torture and subsequent use in First Lord’s schemes). This leads to First Lord punishing Safia terribly: she is tortured to death.
Except Safia survives.
Safia’s looks are gone. Her mind and body are deeply wounded. She can never be a courtesan again, and that’s everything she knows. But does Safia give up? Does she collapse into despair? Does she accept her place in this story and society, where women are the playthings of men, where a noble tyrant can do whatever he wants to a nobody like her?
No. She plots her revenge and orchestrates a scheme to KIDNAP THE SUBLIME HEIR. She fucking manipulates the situation so she can make off with the First Lord’s sole infant son. This ends up being a vital part to the survival of another character (the heir’s teenage mom, who also hates First Lord’s guts) and to the First Lord’s overthrow. Safia survives the whole thing, finds someone who loves her on terms she can accept, and helps bring about the overthrow of the lord who tried to have her murdered in the most degrading way possible. Javere rewards her by letting her build her own House of Women.
Bringing down the First Lord is a huge enterprise, in this book. So many people are involved, all playing different roles. Some people who seem vitally important at the start (like the regent general) end up outflanked and outmaneuvered. Others who don’t seem important at all, like Safia, end up playing far bigger roles than anyone could’ve foreseen. Everyone has their role to play in bringing down the tyrant, and all of them matter.
And that was a story I needed today.
It’s an epic fantasy/political intrigue story set in a society roughly based on feudal Japan (though it is clearly not Japan—for one thing, it’s not an island). It’s the only book of its type that we have ever been into, and that’s because despite the complexity (there are at least half a dozen different POV groups of importance), the book is organized such that we could keep track of all of it, and the world feels so rich and satisfying to read. Every little detail feels so intricate, from wine flask and garden design to the Hyacinth Shadow World, where the female sex workers run things. (And oh, remember them. We will come back to them.) I feel like if the book had come out just a little bit later (it came out in ‘96), it could’ve been a hit. It’s a solid, well-made story.
The characters and plot of Ladylord feel like a stage drama. The heroes are suitably heroic, the villains truly despicable. When we read this book, we imagine it as an elaborate opera with droolworthy sets. But all that isn’t why I felt a craving to reread it.
See, Ladylord is the best book I have read about overthrowing a despot.
The plot goes as such: Monserria is a land of five provinces, each ruled by a lord, and overseen as a whole by the First Lord (said despot). The Third Lord dies unexpectedly young, with no sons, and in desperation, he names his best daughter (Javere) his son and heir. She has to get ratified by the First Lord, so leaves Third Province in the capable hands of her general to try and claim her title. Monserria, though, is a patriarchal pit of vipers, so First Lord basically gives her a fool’s quest to get rid of her so he can plot taking over her lands. From that one, seemingly trivial act (a woman? Ruling Third Province? How absurd!), things spiral and expand, until finally a huge ensemble cast consisting of men and women, from highest nobility to lowest Dung-Eater, from ancient old men to teenage girls, from all five provinces plus three desert tribes from a totally different region, take down the First Lord.
There are countless stories about a hero taking down an evil overlord one-on-one. We also have beloved stories where our heroes merely SURVIVE under a despot, doing the best they can, running out the clock (like in The Walking Boy or The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions). And epic fantasies are filled with a noble quest band who (along with faceless armies) take down an evil army. But Ladylord is the only one we have really gotten into that focuses on a huge ensemble of CIVILIANS involved in taking the First Lord down. Yes, some of them are nobles (like the Ladylord Javere and her husband Ivo, who is the world’s blandest, most supportive husband, and we fucking love that about him) but many of them are not... like Safia.
I need to tell you about Safia. Safia is a fucking character I did not appreciate until my most recent read. She is the fucking best, and she seems to come out of fucking nowhere.
Because Monserria is a patriarchal pit of vipers, women can basically only obtain power in it through high birth or marriage. However, there is another option for those women who want independence: the Hyacinth Shadow World. These women range from the most disdained of sex workers to the highest courtesans, and they play a vital social role in Monserria. They also operate somewhat independently; it’s not clear how much power the lords truly have over them, and the male lords tend to dismiss them.
Safia starts the book as a courtesan of the highest rank. She joins the story because due to various plot reasons, Ladylord Javere cannot bang her best white-bread husband, and it’s a socially acceptable thing in Monserria to hire a courtesan as a replacement. Ivo, who is the bland best, never does sleep with her, but appearances must be maintained, so Safia ends up in the “ratify my title” party by happenstance. Because she’s not really built for a hard quest, she ends up being given to the First Lord as a gift... and an inside woman.
Everyone dismisses Safia as a rare flower, pretty and delicate and emptyheaded. They’re all wrong. She manages to keep First Lord distracted and engineer the honorable suicide of an ally (and thus let said ally escape torture and subsequent use in First Lord’s schemes). This leads to First Lord punishing Safia terribly: she is tortured to death.
Except Safia survives.
Safia’s looks are gone. Her mind and body are deeply wounded. She can never be a courtesan again, and that’s everything she knows. But does Safia give up? Does she collapse into despair? Does she accept her place in this story and society, where women are the playthings of men, where a noble tyrant can do whatever he wants to a nobody like her?
No. She plots her revenge and orchestrates a scheme to KIDNAP THE SUBLIME HEIR. She fucking manipulates the situation so she can make off with the First Lord’s sole infant son. This ends up being a vital part to the survival of another character (the heir’s teenage mom, who also hates First Lord’s guts) and to the First Lord’s overthrow. Safia survives the whole thing, finds someone who loves her on terms she can accept, and helps bring about the overthrow of the lord who tried to have her murdered in the most degrading way possible. Javere rewards her by letting her build her own House of Women.
Bringing down the First Lord is a huge enterprise, in this book. So many people are involved, all playing different roles. Some people who seem vitally important at the start (like the regent general) end up outflanked and outmaneuvered. Others who don’t seem important at all, like Safia, end up playing far bigger roles than anyone could’ve foreseen. Everyone has their role to play in bringing down the tyrant, and all of them matter.
And that was a story I needed today.
A side note about Ivo
Date: 2024-11-06 03:59 pm (UTC)Ladylord isn’t a romance. Javere and Ivo marry at the very start of the book, and not once does he falter the entire time. He is happy playing second fiddle, he adores his tiny wife, and had the book been a classic “you and me fight the bad guy” book, he would’ve been the most boring man in it.
But Ladylord ISN’T that kind of book. It’s not a heroic romance. It’s an epic of intrigue. There are shitloads of colorful characters in Ladylord, buckets of conflict, which makes pleasant, reliable Ivo EXACTLY the kind of character you want in that position. In a world of vipers, his steadfast kindness is a reprieve, both for Ladylord Javere and the reader. Had they been fighting for sexual dominance the whole book, it would’ve been unbearable. Instead, his is a blandness you care about. He is the kind of character who seems happiest making everyone else look good, and we truly, truly love that about him. In a book that’s all about the ensemble, it’s really satisfying to see a nobleman, a LOVE INTEREST, happily play a supporting role, in all sense of the word. Had Javere never been named heir, you get the sense that he wouldn’t have minded at all.
Ivo has no lust for power, no corruptibility. He just really loves his wife and you know what, good for him.
Re: A side note about Ivo
Date: 2024-11-06 05:32 pm (UTC)I feel like I am sweeping up the window. I am singing the new year's ballad anyway. I am holding my wife's hand anyway. I am seeing what pieces of a good life we can scrounge together for each other. We gotta. We owe each other that.
Re: A side note about Ivo
Date: 2024-11-06 05:54 pm (UTC)Waymond Wang also sounds pretty great. We haven't seen Everything Everywhere All At Once, but that "sweeping up the broken glass" feeling is so real.
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Date: 2024-11-06 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 08:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 08:09 pm (UTC)